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Thursday, January 11, 2007

Nation's Top Scientists Strongly Reject OMB's Regulatory Guidance

This morning, the National Academy of Sciences rejected the White House Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Proposed Risk Assessment Bulletin. OMB charged NAS with the task of peer-reviewing the bulletin, and NAS issued a stinging rebuke.

The Bulletin calls for an overly standardized method across all agencies of assessing the potential risks of regulatory action. No matter if the issue is the environment, consumer products, or massive buildings and infrastructure, the framework would be the same.

NAS cites concerns that OMB is overstepping its bounds in suggesting this restrictive framework, and that micromanaging the ways in which agencies go about their business stymies the expertise within those agencies. Ultimately, NAS smartly concludes that this one-size-fits-all approach is unrealistic and would not jibe well with scientific and technological findings:

We began our review of the draft bulletin thinking we would only be recommending changes, but the more we dug into it, the more we realized that from a scientific and technical standpoint, it should be withdrawn altogether.

OMB has called off the Bulletin for now. Reg Watch revels in sound science trumping politics this time around.

Read the NAS news release and report

Read more about how the Bulletin would lead to dangerous deregulations.

Posted by Matt Madia